2017 detector finds

[ktmman]

Where are you guys hiding this cool weather you speak of?
Send some to Qld please :Y:

 

[Goldpick]

Back to the same site again today for about 3 hours, extended my search pattern about 20 metres out from the known producing area, and still came up with quite a few targets. Digging all low conductors proved to be fruitful once again, with some lovely intact gold gilded cuff links and a small gilded broach. Had a trio of braces buckles turn up not far from the surface, along with a few buttons and various buckles (most likely horse related). Was stoked to locate two more coins, an Edwardian 1904 half penny, and a veil head Victoria 1896 half penny.

Also found the remains of a purse, unfortunately there were no loose coins sitting nearby (one can always hope). As shown in the pics, some of buckles were literally sticking out of the ground, hence the site seems relatively undisturbed.

Will most likely start hitting the location with a smaller coils now, working between the Fisher F75 with the NEL Sharpshooter, and the Makro Racer 2 with the 5.5x10" elliptical coil.

 

[ktmman]

Lots of cool finds there Goldpick, who knows what will come out next.

 

[Danny13]

What a site!! Great finds Goldpick

 

[silver]

Plenty of good targets there Gp. :Y:

 

[B5MECH]

:Y: what a top hunt, love those black penny's 8) were the cuff links attached to each other? that made it easy to get the matching pair

 

[Smoky bandit]

Interesting place to hunt..Well done :Y:

 

[Heatho]

Seems this could be a very productive site for you GP, looking forward to seeing what else pops up there.

 

[Goldpick]

This next hunt took place on the weekend at yet another ruins location recommended by a friend. It's not exactly a secret spot, hence quite a few detectors have been over it in the past, including a group of detectorists who rocked up at the same location later in the arvo. Nice guys they were too, just starting out detecting using an x-terra 505 and Ace 400i.

Anyway, the main house site was absolutely littered with ferrous gear, with the Deus going off like a machine gun over all the iron targets. I rarely use the reactivity 4 setting, but thought it was an appropriate place to try it out on - turns out it worked really well isolating any non-ferrous targets hard up against iron targets, including a 1913 half penny which had somehow been missed by previous detectorists.

Items of interest included the remains of a pocket watch, several buttons including a C.Mackenzie, Mount Gambier example who was a local tailor from the late 1800's. The 1929-1930 dog registration tag was a difficult target to pick out, yet another example of the Deus's ability to locate masked targets missed by others.

The best find was a silvered bronze WW1 Victory medallion, issued to children aged 0-14 on March 1919 to commemorate the end of WW1.

I thought it was a pretty impressive result thinking the site had been hammered in the past, I'm sure there is still plenty to be found yet, warranting several follow up trips to the site.

 

[golddiggerart]

Those are some cracker finds mate....look forward to seeing what else is out there for you.

 

[Smoky bandit]

Nice finds there mate..We all know....knowone ever finds it all...there's always something left

 

[silver]

That site has never been hunted Gp (properly).
:Y: :Y:

 

[Dave law]

Got some killer finds there!! Top looking site. Can't wait to see what else you find. Cheers

 

[Danny13]

Yeah that's a nice site goldpick , must of been a fair bit of research done before you hit that! Awesome finds !

 

[B5MECH]

That site has never been hunted Gp (properly).
:Y: :Y:

You should go back tomorrow when the other guys thin the junk out a bit :Y: nice run

 

[Heatho]

Great hunt there GP, perfect site for the Deus too it seems, well done.

 

[Sandta]

Wow ?
Thats a heck of a lot of targets for a 'well done over' site
They must have been using a paper plate nailed to a stick :lol:

 

[Goldpick]

Wow ?
Thats a heck of a lot of targets for a 'well done over' site
They must have been using a paper plate nailed to a stick :lol:

Problem with these types of well frequented sites, you either need a very fast recovering detector, or the use of a very small coil (or the combination of both) to pick up on many of the left over targets. There is a good reason why many of them are left in the ground, and that is because they simply cannot detect them on some detectors.

From previous experience, I know my Explorer/Etrac would have simply nulled out over all the small bits of rusted iron lying in the soil, masking anything of worth, even with an open screen, hence why I purchased the Deus in the first place. Despite that, even with the Deus you still have slow your swing speed right down to a crawl to pick out individual non-ferrous targets from the many low grunts of iron, and the high tone falsing of the larger pieces of iron sheet metal. Keep in mind that this is will an 11" coil, so you could imagine the combo of the 9" coil and fast recovery speeds would unlock even more.

One hole provided three part rusty nails overlying a button in the same hole, that was a mixed tone iron/mid tone that I thought was worth investigating that proved to be on the money.

The often neglected area of these sites is the open ground adjacent to the dwelling, rather than concentrating on the ground around the actual house site. The surrounding ground has been ripped, hence many good items have been dragged a good 50-100m away from the house site. It is these area that I tend to concentrate on, and has proven in the past to be very fruitful.

Another factor is time. Some people are put off detecting a site if nothing good appears in the first 30 minutes, or if at first they are confronted with too many junk signals. You have to spend at least a couple of hours surveying the whole area surrounding the house site to survey the extent of targets. That will give you a good picture on where to spend most of you time, and to minimise time wastage. As an example, the finds pictured above were from an area probably 100x100m, whereas the house site is maybe 20x20m, so you can see the amount of ground covered and the time taken to do so is quite significant, and the finds were not easily come by, nor in a concentrated area. I could easily go ever the same area another 10 times and still manage to dig some good targets, as you never get it all on the first, netherlone on subsequent visits.

Even detecting 100m down the access track to the site revealed a few buttons and a nice buckle, so it pays to explore all areas.

Unfortunately many detectorists visit these types of sites tend cherry pick only coin targets, and consider anything else as "junk", the types of items that really divulge information on the history of the site, and on the types of people that use to occupy them. If you neglect to dig common shotgun cartridges or lead targets, you will also be overlooking items such as buttons and old jewllery pieces (and possibly gold items).

It was evident that there were many holes left by previous detectorists, some of which left buttons, old copper jewllery pieces etc still sitting in or near the holes, maybe they lacked a pinpointer, or simply weren't interested in them.

I'ved attached a pretty crappy drawing to give you the idea of the spread of targets, with the red dots indicating finds.

 

[Goldpick]

The WW1 Victory medallion cleaned up pretty good, most of the silver gilding is still present.

 

[Heatho]

That's a really great find GP, nice that there's still some silver on it.